WINDHOEK. On Friday I had one of those brainstorm sessions where everything clicks and you need a cigarette after. DeeDee Yates, a new grandmother with an indeterminate transatlantic accent who seems to have worked in every country in Africa and is now our advisor at the ministry’s Department of Early Childhood Development, came to toss ideas around for the advocacy piece I’ve been writing. We’d just hashed out the points we felt we had to include about the complex Child Care and Protection Bill, and I said, “Okay, now how do we make them realize this can’t wait another year? Another year is going to turn into another 18. They have to see that with every day that goes by, a real kid gets hurt.” [[MORE]] I jotted down a note to get us going:      WHILE WE WAIT DeeDee took a look and immediately suggested tweaking it to:      WHILE WE WAVER Namibia’s independence hero, the father of the country, who’s on their money and who could say and write no wrong - rumour is he still pulls the current president’s strings - titled his autobiography Where Others Wavered (see pic). I’d vaguely heard of the book, but when DeeDee told me about it the idea seemed brilliant. Most of the top government brass here, including the new ministry manager we want to win over, fought in this man’s resistance army. We’ll need to confirm with actual Namibians that this will resonate the way we think it could, but I think this title stands a good chance of really getting under our target audience’s skin. In the pic is the title panel I did for the draft, which went to our partners at the Legal Assistance Centre today. They liked it (phew), so next it goes to the ministry to get their reactions. That could be next week, because for the rest of this week I’m travelling up north to get photos and interviews at a bunch of our project sites as they wind down. Really excited - finally getting out into the country. Many pictures to come from that.

WINDHOEK. On Friday I had one of those brainstorm sessions where everything clicks and you need a cigarette after. DeeDee Yates, a new grandmother with an indeterminate transatlantic accent who seems to have worked in every country in Africa and is now our advisor at the ministry’s Department of Early Childhood Development, came to toss ideas around for the advocacy piece I’ve been writing. We’d just hashed out the points we felt we had to include about the complex Child Care and Protection Bill, and I said, “Okay, now how do we make them realize this can’t wait another year? Another year is going to turn into another 18. They have to see that with every day that goes by, a real kid gets hurt.”

I jotted down a note to get us going:

     WHILE WE WAIT

DeeDee took a look and immediately suggested tweaking it to:

     WHILE WE WAVER

Namibia’s independence hero, the father of the country, who’s on their money and who could say and write no wrong - rumour is he still pulls the current president’s strings - titled his autobiography Where Others Wavered (see pic). I’d vaguely heard of the book, but when DeeDee told me about it the idea seemed brilliant. Most of the top government brass here, including the new ministry manager we want to win over, fought in this man’s resistance army. We’ll need to confirm with actual Namibians that this will resonate the way we think it could, but I think this title stands a good chance of really getting under our target audience’s skin. In the pic is the title panel I did for the draft, which went to our partners at the Legal Assistance Centre today. They liked it (phew), so next it goes to the ministry to get their reactions.
That could be next week, because for the rest of this week I’m travelling up north to get photos and interviews at a bunch of our project sites as they wind down. Really excited - finally getting out into the country. Many pictures to come from that.